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With all the new reworks on champs and items, can AD items/Marksmen champs be treated the same, too?

DizzyBunnies·8/1/2015, 7:31:38 PM·3 votes·586 views

It's been recently confirmed that Riot is in the process of reworking a few fighters, and will be tweaking their builds as well (itemization).

Also, as we all know, AP items just got a huge overhaul.

I'm seeing constant nerfs to ADCs (Kalista's recent nerfs, Sivir's soon-to-be ult nerf (not sure if that's still happening though)...MF's "rework" in general...), which is a little discouraging. Why not simply buff the weaker ADCs to be on par with the stronger ones?

Also, what about items? While Mages and other AP champs now get their powerspike at 1250g, I'm still in lane farming for another 300g...In addition, playing a mage and don't know what to start? Who cares! Just get an amp tome and build it into nearly anything a mage would need.

When are ADC items getting some love? BT, IE, PD, LW...nearly every ADC builds the same, we don't get much variety unless we wanna do little to no dmg, so can we at least have cheaper items? Yes, we do the most damage late game, but I won't ever get to late game if I'm spending 20 minutes just to finish IE . Anyway, that's it. Thanks for reading!

~~(inb4 comments telling me to QQ more)~~

3 Comments

GinoSoldier8/1/2015, 7:42:02 PM1 votes

ADC itemization sucks, if only because there's only one build path that's viable for most if not all of them. AD casters are a bit different, but largely unused these days. Riot knows this and is working on it, last i read ADC itemization should come right after Bruiser items.

I'm sure this won't be the case but i'd like bruiser champion to access armor pen but not Crit, and marksmen champions to have Crit but not armor pen. It'd give a more important role to each of them instead of having one do all.

Critmaster Garen8/1/2015, 8:19:29 PM1 votes

here is the problem with adc.

they only lane against each other. you buff the weaker picks, and they become the stronger picks, while the other adc arent played anymore. not to mention they dont really vary in their playstile like basically any other class in the game.

theyre all doing the same thing. auto attacking. so naturally at all times only the 2 or 3 adc that deal the most damage while being the safest during lane and teamfight phase are actually played. this has been going on for every season so far. the "holy trinity of adc" aka the 3 adc that are currently viable.

next problem is their itemization. adc will only chose the items that are the most cost effective at increasing the damage on their auto attacks. meaning except for slight variations like triforce on corki, their build will always be exactly the same. there are not many ways to put ad, as and crit on an item. and only the one that grants the most cost effective stat combination will be picked.

you cant make the build pathes more comfortable for them either. theyre lategame champs who are terrible lane bullies against most other champs in the game. so theyre geared towards very specific power spikes and making their big items available later than everyone elses, to give their opponent some breathing room to itemize into armor first.

otherwise youd see them popping up mid and top as a regular occurance.

they need to competely rethink the place adc have in this game and give them a specific nieche instead of making the game centric around them, before more than 2 or 3 can be viable at the same time.

this means changing the class to a point, where teams can go into a game completely without an adc and not have a terrible chance of winning from the start. making them optional instead of mandatory, and then finding a way for different adc to find different positions in the game, if you do chose to take one with you. be it bot lane, mid, top or jungle.

Abyssphere8/1/2015, 8:38:39 PM1 votes

They have stated that they're gonna take a look at AD(C) items soon though the only timeline is "after World's" so you'll have to wait just a bit. Could be before pre-season though which would be nice.

That said I can't say I really have a problem with how they've been balancing individual ADCs. I don't really feel like the class has seen more nerfs than any other this year - really it's just been continuous Sivir nerfs and the occasional glance in Kalista's direction since the start of the year, so Riot's been pretty soft on them. Compare that to the continuous "Hmm, which mage/assassin shall we gut this patch?" theme this year has had and things look a lot better for ADCs. There's also not that much imbalance among the class - only ADC that genuinely seems bad right now is Twitch.

I mean think about it - ADCs are at least still getting played in their lane. Mages and assassins are less popular than stuff like mid lane Jayce, Varus and Kog'Maw right now - even stuff like mid lane Jarvan and Irelia is seen more often than the vast majority of mages in competitive play. Looking at bot lane, players will choose Nautilus, Gragas and even Trundle as their support before they'd take a look at people who are actually designed to be supports like Sona, Soraka or Nami.

ADCs haven't had the best year (but hey, at least Blade of the Ruined King is more ridiculous than ever) but at least they're still getting played. Much better than the support situation where pro players are happy to play anyone EXCEPT people who are actually designed to support (unless it's Thresh or Janna to counter the tanks) or the mid lane situation where actual mid laners are so weak that pros have had to resort to taking people like Varus for poke and Jarvan IV is more commonly played as an assassin than the game's actual assassins.

Some ADCs could use buffs but imo they're not the class in the worst spot. Mages and assassins need a huge rebalance first if you ask me.